A discovery made back in the 1920’s may in fact have an important consequence for some of the origins of the earliest ancestors in the Americas. The remains of a boy buried in a prehistoric grave near the village of Mal’ta in Siberia (Russia) back in the 1920’s were recently sequenced for the boy’s DNA. The DNA has been found to be of an ancient origin going back to paleolithic peoples who had originally come from Europe. The boy’s DNA closely resembles the DNA found in the remains of an individual named Kennewick man found in North America.

                       It is now being hypothesized that there was more than migration to the American continent, and that some of the peoples who crossed into the new continent may have been of European paleolithic origin. This is of course not to say that the people who may have come to the American continent were the same as today’s modern Europeans—they were not. However, they may have been closer to the Europeans of prehistoric times than is true today. We also have DNA from ancient peoples that crossed over from Asia who are closer in origin to today’s modern East Asians such as Chinese, Japanese and Koreans (note: of course they are of the same race as the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, but they are NOT exactly the same. The Native Americans still have some DNA variations that distinguish them from today’s modern East Asians).

                      Today, all Native Americans that have had their DNA tested all have a point of origin close to modern East Asians. So a whole list of questions are now being asked. Was there more than one group of paleolithic peoples who crossed into the Americas? If so, were any of them related to the paleolithic peoples of Europe, and how much of a percentage of those who crossed over did they represent? What percentage of those who crossed over were of the paleolithic peoples from East Asia? If there were any, what happened to the paleolithic peoples that may have originated in Europe?

                         We have now a possible established line of paleolithic (prehistoric) peoples from Europe going from Europe through Siberia and possibly into the Americas. But we have no clue about how many may have settled in the Americas if there were that many at all. We pretty much know that those paleolithic peoples of East Asian origin who crossed over into the Americas did so in considerable numbers in order for their descendents to be the only surviving ones on this continent before the coming of the modern day Europeans. But was this picture true say 10,000 to 20,000 years ago? Until we have far more information, this part shall remain a mystery.